


Mementos

by Callmedale



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Canon Compliant, Computer was being slow and dumb so I’m adding tags later, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hoarding, I tagged a few relevant relationships but they're barely there, Mostly Canon Compliant, Tags might change with more chapters, first chaptered fic, had to rewrite this because i didn't save the first time, kagami's perspective, miraculous ladybug instagram accounts, most ships are just in the background, not much hoarding though, not sure how many chapters to expect, scrapbooking, sentimental kagami, some characters tagged that are in later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-15 23:51:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmedale/pseuds/Callmedale
Summary: Kagami slowly builds a collection of pictures, souvenirs, and various mementos from her budding friendship and eventually learns about preserving these memories while also getting better at making new ones.





	Mementos

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is mostly a re-contextualization of the canon to fit with the idea of Kagami being sentimental about her experiences when she first gets to Paris, I separated it into its own chapter because the rest was new

It started off pretty simply with a day planner, it was part of her standard school supplies so she’d gotten it alongside some other things before starting classes that year. It went unused mostly because her schedule was almost entirely electronic and regimented so tightly that it barely changed anyways and not offering much room for surprises so why write anything down? So it sat pristine in her fencing equipment bag just in case. 

But then part way through the year her mother heard of a school with a more prestigious fencing instructor having open tryouts for spot that had become available on their team, if she could pass the tryouts she’d have to transfer to that school but she had very few connections to her current one so this opportunity was one that she had no problems with. She started out pretty confidently after seeing her competition for the tryouts she went straight to the instructor and challenged the best student. 

Here she met Adrien Agreste, a reserved but silly boy. Their match was fast paced and chaotic. They wound up in a position where it was up to the audience to call it and there’d been only one witness. This is when she met Marinette Dupain Cheng, a clumsy and scatterbrained girl. Some drama ensued and she’d missed parts from being akumatized but in the end Adrien’s vouching for not only her tenacity but marinette’s enthusiasm despite inexperience got their match factored as a tie instead of a loss officially placing her on the team and in that school. Team photos were taken shortly after and she took the group photo she’d received tore it down to mainly just herself, her teacher, and her opponent from that first day and placed it inside her planner to prevent getting crumpled, the picture would be of little importance to her blind mother but she figured it could be a private reminder for now.

Adrien was the only real challenge in her age group at practice so Kagami quickly found herself sparring almost exclusively with him. This meant she quickly got familiar enough with his tactics that one day she was certain something was off. In the locker room she confronted him on the subject and he longingly described being unable to properly confess to a girl, she was only aware of one girl he seemed to show any liking towards and that was Marinette whom he seemed almost bashful about saying was only a friend like he was disappointed it wasn’t more. She tried to be logical with her answer at first and simply suggest he change his targets but when he immediately turned to offer the rose he’d been contemplating to her she felt a great deal of pride for even being offered a gift and she knew she’d defend what she meant to him. 

Later that day Adrien invited her to go skating with a friend and upon seeing Marinette arrive with another boy her suspicions that Adrien had failed to be able to confess to Marinette seemed to be supported. However she’d invited another boy which may have been why Adrien was so upset. Once out on the ice she did her best to engage with Adrien who seemed distracted by the other two not to mention the ice rink owner harassing the four of them until Marinette skated into a wall and fell. Both boys rushed to her and held out a hand but neither went the extra step to lift her up and she grew hesitant to grab either, in that moment, she came to the conclusion that her hesitation with both boys was probably why Adrien seemed to think he was probably why Adrien believed that she didn’t like him back. She made her move then seeing that none of the others would and rushed to Marinette to lift her up and whisper a summation of her recent realizations that if she couldn’t decide if someone as kind as Adrien was worth her time then Kagami knew he’d be worth hers. 

Marinette bolted after that and Adrien followed out of concern, followed soon by a brief akuma incident that left herself and Luka and presumably many others across Paris frozen in place, which was uncomfortable but quickly resolved. There wasn’t too much time left to spend off of the breaks in hers or Adrien’s schedules and the akuma sorta ended the other two wanting to stick around so the four of them headed out. Adrien stopped and told her that he decided not to give up on the girl he loved and Kagami, looking at Marinette, knew that there was definitely something worthwhile he saw in her but after whatever that rose he’d given her had her feeling she didn’t plan to take this lying down but would let him decide when he was fully over her because he didn’t seem to want to rush away from the girl he liked. In her car ride back home she took the now slightly cold rose and set it inside her planner by her picture, now holding a slightly different meaning as part of a pair, and pressed the flower for safekeeping inside her book and moved the book to her jacket pocket for safekeeping.

Her mother had slowly been building a working relationship with Gabriel after noting that he was the father of the only worthy opponent on the fencing team and the only parent at this school with a similar attitude. Kagami hadn’t cared much for the man but the two parents were definitely fans of schedules and scheduling herself and Adrien together. When both families were invited to England for the royal wedding she welcomed the chance to socialize. Adrien had met with Marinette at the station and was given a note to be read later, to Kagami waiting on the train steps it looked almost like a cliche goodbye from a war movie. After a short delay they had a weekend in England where they had to be dressed up for a few formal events and were sorta the only people their age group at a few. At one point the two managed to break away and Adrien seemed to take charge on a mission to explore London. They spent a while in a small late night drugstore/grocery store where he talked to the guy at the counter and she got a bit concerned about how close he thought they were by then but he said he’d just been picking up a gift for a friend. Later on the train ride back she peeked at the bag he’d gotten and saw what the medicine name was, she was unsure who it was but his dad was sick at the beginning of the trip so maybe for him. Once their short vacation was over she put her invitation, her train ticket, and everything from her pockets on her desk noticing a hotel keycard she’d forgotten, she thought nothing of it and placed all three in a desk drawer.

Another result of their parents socializing together was her invitation to the Ladybug movie. She liked Ladybug from when they met at the museum and respected the hero but this movie premiere was just annoying and messy. She wore her formal clothes and got greeted in pretty standard polite ways by many guests, extremely rudely by someone claiming to know Adrien who she immediately told to leave her alone, saw Marinette working as a server and struggling to stay balanced in the commotion, then spent a good amount of time avoiding the messes people had left until hen yet another Akuma happened. Once that was resolved she sat next to Adrien with Marinette by him for the movie, she didn’t expect as much music as it had but Adrien’s voice acting as Chat Noir was good and she was proud for him. Afterwards she noticed she still had her movie ticket and set it with her event invitation on her desk.

Clutter was generally avoided in her household as her mother was blind and could be tripped up by a mess but she had begun to reassure herself with the things that she’d begun to collect in her room. Before now she’d mostly been amassing trophies; but it was different with these, they reminded her that she could be appreciated for who she was and not simply what she’d achieved. She even went so far as to console herself with her rose and picture with Adrien that she carried with her in her planner, a reminder that he still cared even if she failed. That was until she received a sudden text from adrien showing him getting a kiss from she’d heard a lot about and if those rumors were to believed this was a girl who was leagues more influential than herself. She felt used,she lashed out at a tree in anger and then… nothing until she was sat in front of Ladybug and Chat Noir and Lila, she’d been akumatized again. This was unlike her previous experience in that there was no anger or rage, just sadness and no apology or explanation, Chat just said Lila couldn’t be trusted and carried her away. She still only had Adrien as her one real and had grown to take some comfort in that but it wasn’t the same so he left her planner buried away in her room for now knowing it’d be as unused as before.

After being akumatized again she found herself continuing to be limited by her schedule but Adrien decided to introduce her to a rebellious workaround he used for his own schedule, the two of them were going to skip practice. And attend a concert his friends were hosting. They simply arranged to go to the wrong address, it was so simple but so devious that she was just joking with adrien about their plan. The concert was on a boat, which was apparently also the home to some of the band members. When they arrived she saw Marinette with the boy she’d invited to go skating hanging over her teaching her to play. It looked like they might’ve been together but Marinette got weird about it when she asked. The practice was interrupted, however, by a tour bus coming by and some rockstar asking that boy’s mom to come back to his band. He seems to know Marinette and asked him to choose a replacement guitarist and she chose Adrien which seemed to confuse everyone, that is until that was also interrupted but by an akuma this time. She tried to protect her friend and his friends but something the akuma did made her miss everything that had happened. Once everyone was back together the mini concert turned into more of a jam session between the rockstar, his guitarist he rehired, and the kids, and Adrien explained the rockstar was Jagged Stone. He suggested a CD that he’d gotten autographed for himself for her to pick up as a starter if she wanted to learn more about it. So she picked one up from the tour bus pin their way out. It smelled like leather and she put the disc itself in her computer as it was the only thing she had to play CDs on and listened to it with some headphones. The music was about as chaotic as her day but she was glad to have both new experiences.

As much as she enjoyed the time she got to spend with Adrien it was almost always scheduled by their parents and not leaving much room for spontaneity, even their mini rebellion was scheduled. And beyond that there was the issue of her only real friend being a boy, regardless of how confusingly she felt about him she knew there’d be things he couldn’t relate to or talk about and the lack of clarity on why not to ‘trust Lila’. She wondered for a while if she should make an effort to make some additional friends and looked up some guides on forming friendships with people. It went mostly unused until she got a brief moment without anything scheduled that just happened to align with a promotion that a local TV station was doing with Adrien that invited people across Paris to follow clues throughout the city and be paired with someone along the way to finish the hunt, so she decided to continue her teenage rebellion one her own and enter the contest in her free time. At the start she was quickly making her way through the clues until the game prompted her to find her partner. She looked around a bit before seeing Marinette on her phone probably doing the same part of the hunt. Marinette seemed to see her as well and immediately turn around and appeared to argue with herself before coming to face her. Kagami quickly confronted her over these actions when she asked about a partnership only to get a rambling response but since they were the only ones at this portion of the hunt so far she decided to work with this and see if she could befriend this girl in the spirit of their shared competition, after all Adrien seemed to have gotten on good terms with her so how hard could it be. 

Their first major challenge as a team involved fishing for clues, and while Marinette busied herself with the fishing pole she checked her phone for some of the advice in making friends. First the simple things, personal compliments and reassuring smiles, so she started by commenting on Marinette’s hair and Marinette quickly reciprocated that notion. Not wanting to fall into a loop of complimenting each other back and forth she moved onto the next step and started asking questions to get to know her which mostly resulted in only finding out that Marinette is very indecisive. Still she was determined to make this work so after they’d fished out their clue they worked their way through location after locating despite Marinette’s wild guesses about the meaning of each clue until the final one had them swap phones for a selfie and then meet back up. She was running a little close on the amount of free time she had available by the time she got all the way back to Marinette with her phone and then it happened, her phone rang in Marinette’s hands and she’d answered, revealing to her mother what she’d been doing. To her credit Marinette quickly tried to course correct and Kagami was thankful for the last ditch effort but the damage was done and she knew her mother wouldn’t be pleased. What she didn’t expect was just how mad her mother was because she showed up as an akuma to take her away and lock her up. She had next to no clue what was happening outside during her mother’s akumatization until a box containing macaroons and an odd necklace was sucked in with her. Upon inspection the necklace burst out in light revealing a being calling itself Longg who briefly explained the situation and how to use her powers as a dragon miraculous holder, So she quickly transformed and entered the fray of the battle as Ryuko, but it quickly became clear that Ladybug had written a note with a plan that had been in the box and in her hasty escape she’d missed it and given herself away to the akuma and therefore Hawkmoth. The fight was invigorating and her new powers felt amazing to use but that mistake was in the back of her mind a lot of the time so she was certain Ladybug would be upset and she’d be in trouble again like she’d been with her mom moments ago. When the fight was over she knew she’d have to give it all back and was prepared for Ladybug’s disappointment but while Ladybug admitted that using her again would be dangerous because of Hawkmoth knowing she recognized Kagami as one of the fastest learners she’d worked with to this point. After all that she felt empowered enough to stand up against her mother and repay Marinette’s fumbling attempt to prevent her from getting in trouble, and to her surprise her mother agreed to let her continue hanging out with her. So since the two of them no longer had a competition to win after the whole Akuma made most of the people involved run for cover, Marinette suggested they go get something to drink and they took some pictures to commemorate it all. She decided after gaining Ladybug’s respect that Marinette shouldn’t be too hard to befriend and decided that she’d continue her efforts to gain her trust as well but for now she had the picture of the two of them sharing a drink near Notre Dame and one extra contact in her phone.

Her collection of selfies taken with friends basically doubled when she got to visit Adrien during a brief business meeting between their parents at his house. They weren’t allowed to leave the entryway on account of Adrien being in trouble for a party when his father had been out for the day but the two of them still talked. She wanted to bring up the photo he’d sent of the girl Chat Noir had called a liar but couldn’t find a place in the conversation. Eventually Adrien got around to mentioning his new Instagram account and that led to them taking a picture for him to post there. She also got a look at some of the things his other friends had been up to before it was time to go. Once home she had him send her a copy of the picture to have in her phone for now.

**Author's Note:**

> the second part is on its way but I don't know when


End file.
